


flowers for your grave

by antithestral



Category: Castle (TV 2009), The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Castle AU, M/M, Murder Mystery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:14:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24181171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antithestral/pseuds/antithestral
Summary: Jaskier gawps at the stubbled, square-jawed specimen of gorgeous manhood at his door for a full three seconds before his brain comes online, and then he scowls. “Seriously? She’s sending mestrippersnow?”Tall, Pale and Possibly Homicidal arches an eyebrow at him. “Detective Rivia,” he says, flashing one of those really fancy badges that Jaskier has seen serious LARPers use. “NYPD.”“Bloody hell. She sent me acop-stripper?!”
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 141
Kudos: 408





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> [i know at least half of the tv fandom is probably too young to remember castle — a decade!!!! it's been a decade??????? my bones hurt. — but it was very good, and det. beckett made me gay, so i'm writing an AU now. not a good au, but there you have it. so sorry you have to be subjected to this kind of capricious cruelty, but i am not a benevolent god.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWCTD65ugDU)

Jaskier gawps at the stubbled, square-jawed specimen of gorgeous manhood at his door for a full three seconds before his brain comes online, and then he scowls. “Seriously? She’s sending me _strippers_ now?”

Tall, Pale and Possibly Homicidal arches an eyebrow at him. “Detective Rivia,” he says, flashing one of those really fancy badges that Jaskier has seen serious LARPers use. “NYPD.”

“Bloody hell. She sent me a _cop_ -stripper?!” Jaskier all but screeches, and then looks frantically both ways down the corridor so he can yank the man inside his apartment before Mrs. Rothko from #2301 sees— anything. 

“Look, not that you’re—” he says, gesturing wildly at Detective McHotpants’... _everything_ , “—you know, _burningly_ hot, but I really don’t need a stripper, at all, thanks a bunch, so if you could just please _go?”_

“I’m not a stripper, Mr. Pankratz.”

“You’re… not…?”

“Detective Rivia,” he says again, in that really flat voice Jaskier’s professors used to use around him in uni, like they thought he was being purposefully obtuse. “NYPD. _Homicide_.”

Jaskier looked at the badge again. That was a… very real-looking fake badge… That… “That’s not a fake badge.”

“Not so much, no. We’d like to ask you a few questions about a murder that occurred recently.”

“Oh,” Jaskier whimpered. 

Detective Rivia smiled at him then, revealing twin, even rows of extremely white teeth, and he wondered if this was what the Australians felt like, when they went swimming with sharks.

  
  


“Mr. Pankratz,” said Rivia, strolling into the interrogation room with a brown accordion folder tucked under one arm, nearly a half-inch thick.

“Really, Jaskier’s fine. Julian, if you’re feeling frisky.”

Rivia’s mouth did that cold little curl at the corner, that said he was thoroughly unamused. “Where were you, the day before yesterday, in the evening, between the hours of six and eleven?”

“Six and eleven, huh,” Jaskier said. He sat back in his chair, considering. Rivia was looming by the opposite wall, arms crossed over his — _remarkable_ — chest. Jaskier wanted to lick it. “So that’s when the murder happened. Can I ask—”

“No.”

“–why me?” Jaskier continued, ignoring him. “I mean, I haven’t left the flat in the last, oh, six days, except for trips to the bodega downstairs—”

“Do you have proof?” Rivia asked immediately. “That you never left your apartment?”

Jaskier ignored him again. This was _fun_. “—so it can’t have been anyone I met. It can’t be that you picked up my DNA at the scene, because DNA doesn’t last long enough to be detected after six days… I didn’t leave anyone angry voice messages or send, you know, crackpot death threats, or any of that, so why, I do wonder, Detective…” He blinked curiously up at Rivia. “Why do you suspect me?”

Det. Rivia crossed the rest of the way to the table in the middle of the room. He set down the file, and pulled out the top sheet - an enlarged Polaroid of a woman’s corpse, lying flat on a linoleum floor, arms crossed over her stomach, and covered head to toe in brilliant red rose petals. Sunflowers covered her eyes, in place of the gold coins that would have been placed on a dead body, a couple hundred years ago. _The ferryman’s bribe,_ Jaskier had called it, in a book he once wrote, when he was in college. In fact, everything about this… He grabbed the picture, sliding it across the tabletop, and peered closer, heart pounding. Yes, everything about this was hauntingly familiar. 

“I wrote this,” he said. “This is from… Flowers for Your Grave, it was one of my first novels. He’s— the murderer— I have a _copycat?”_ When he finally looked back at Rivia, the detective’s expression was almost kind. 

“Mr. Pankratz, I’ll ask you again—”

“Seriously, I don’t like that, it’s _Jaskier_.”

“Jaskier, then. Do you have an alibi for where you were yesterday evening, between the hours of—”

“No,” Jaskier said, looking back at the picture. He felt numb, but that was a good thing, right? There was no time for shock, not right now. “No,” he said again. “But don’t you see? That doesn’t matter.”

Rivia pulled up a chair, and sat down across from him. “Explain.”

“Look, I could give you an alibi, all right? I live in a building with CCTV and a doorman; if you wanted proof I never left the house except to go to bodega, you’d just have to look up the footage and cross-reference it with the bodega’s records. I paid by card every time.”

Rivia shot a glance to his left, where an enormous one-way mirror was inset into the wall, like he was signalling someone on the other side. Jaskier rolled his eyes. “Yes, and you can send your minions to do some useless busywork, but the fact is, if I _really_ wanted to leave my building unnoticed, all I’d have to do is take the stairs the whole way down, and leave out the back! Your legwork is effectively _useless,_ alright?”

“Are you…” Rivia was staring at him like he was a car wreck happening in real time. “Are you _walking back_ your own _alibi?_ The one that gets you out of a _murder charge?!”_

“Would you listen to me! It doesn’t matter!” He jabbed at the photo. “This happened the night before last? Then it’s been thirty-six hours! If this is what you think it is, if this is really a copycat killer, and he’s taking his cues from— from _my book,”_ his voice cracking quietly, “then the second victim died sometime between when you banged on my door and right now, and the whole time, I’ve been in police custody! So you want my alibi, Det. Rivia? Fine! My alibi is YOU!”

The door swung open, and there was a grizzled, imposing looking man on the other side. He had eyes like coals, and they were honed directly on Jaskier. “How in the _hell,”_ the man growled, with his cigarette-hoarse voice that made him sound like a gumshoe out of a Hitchcock flick, “do you know about the second victim?”

But it was Rivia who replied, “Like I said, Captain. It’s in the book,” while Jaskier, for the second time that day, found himself gawping very unattractively at, god, at possibly the most beautiful man he had ever seen in his whole life.

Just his luck. Jaskier was too tired to even be fucking surprised.

  
  


Another detective came in, after Rivia had left with Captain Anabolics, to take his statement. 

“This was quick work,” Jaskier commented idly, while Det. Brass cleaned under his fingernails with the blade extension of a Swiss Army knife. Subtle, that guy.

“Hmm?”

“I’m just saying. I assume someone around the site of the first murder heard some kind of commotion and called the police, right?” he said casually, while he explained, in careful detail, the entire stripper misunderstanding in his statement. Someone in the DA’s office was gonna piss themselves laughing when they eventually found it, and Det. Rivia was never _ever_ gonna live it down, ever. Jaskier was okay with that.. “There hasn’t been enough time for the body to decomp and start to stink up the joint, and the chick in the picture looked pretty, you know, pristine. So — commotion, concerned neighbours call 911. Ipso facto.” 

Det. Brass was staring at him now. 

Jaskier decided to continue, because why not. “So maybe an hour for a uniform to show up on the site, find the body, report it to dispatch, get a call put in to Homicide. Maybe a couple hours to get the perimeter secured, the detectives to show up, CSI, M.E., all that rigamarole. You guys were the ones who got the call?”

“Yeah,” Brass confirmed. 

“Right, so within twenty-four hours, you’ve shut down the crime scene, you’ve eliminated the usual suspects — friends and family special, am I right? — and someone puts together the fact that the scene looks, what, familiar? Yes? Let me guess,” Jaskier muttered, “it was one of the lab techs who made the connection? You will not _believe_ how many of those guys are on the messageboards, the _amount_ of shit I catch from them is seriously astronomi—”

“No, actually,” Brass cut in. “That was Rivia.”

Jaskier blinked at him. “What?” he whispered.

“Rivia was one who figured out someone was copycatting your books.”

“He’s… He’s read my books?” Jaskier asked breathily, while he pinched himself hard under the table, because _oh god oh god oh sweet baby Jesus god._

Brass grinned at him. “Oh aye. Has the whole series and everything. He’s a _fan_.”

Oh god. Jaskier was going to _faint._


	2. Chapter 2

A little later, after Brass had generously provided him with a pack of Doritos and a can of pop from the vending machine and then excused himself, Rivia opened the door to the interrogation room again. 

“Hi!” Jaskier exclaimed brightly, and in his head, the same phrase bumped around like toddlers in a birthday cake sugar high: _he reads my books, he reads my books, he reads MY books!!!!_

Rivia didn’t seem to appreciate his vastly improved mood — all Jaskier got was a flat stare and a brusque, “With me.”

Eagerly, he trotted up next to the detective. “So,” he said. “Detective Brass tells me you’re a _fan_.”

Rivia snorted, dismissive. “Brass talks too much.”

“Au contraire, my friend—”

“You and I are _not_ friends.”

“—he talks just enough! Only a true fan, a hardcore member of the Jaskier Hive would be able to recognize, on sight, the murder scene from a novel as awful as Flowers For Your Grave.”

“Jesus,” Rivia sighed, as they made their way out of the bullpen. 

“Come on, you can tell _me!_ I love meeting fans!”

“Your ego is reaching critical mass already, kid. You don’t need one more.”

Jaskier grinned wryly. “That’s my problem, Detective,” he admitted, “I always need one more,” and for the briefest second, Rivia looked at him with something other than obliterating contempt. “Come on,” Jaskier wheedled shamelessly, and the look on Rivia’s face instantly disappeared, “you gotta give me _something!_ Hey, so, are you on the discussion forums? Any of the message boards?” They came to a stop at the lift bay, and Jaskier gasped theatrically, before looking around and whispering, “Oh my god, are you _Hivemaster11? HotForJaskier269?!!”_

The lift doors dinged open. “No,” Rivia said pleasantly. He held the door open. “After you.”

“Thanks,” Jaskier said. “Seriously, have you ever come to a book signing? A con event?” The lift doors began to close, with Rivia… still on the other side. “Hey wait,” he said, urgently banging on the Doors Open button. 

“Yeah,” Rivia was saying pleasantly, with his evil, twisty, annoyingly hot shark-smile, “that button hasn’t worked since the thing with the Wiccan in the summer of ‘09.” 

“Wait, you’re kicking me out?!”

“We have your statement. Have a nice life.” 

“Hang the fuck on, NO! But it’s _my_ book! I have— expert insights! Key viewpoints! Hey! HEY!!!” he called out, just as the doors of the stupid lift stupidly slammed shut. 

**_Thirty minutes later_ **

**_At the scene of the second murder_ **

“Is this one the same as the last victim?” Jaskier asked the astonishingly pretty medical examiner — which, incidentally, was starting to look like part of some terrible pattern. Since when did the NYPD start hiring exclusively out of, like, the fucking Abercrombie summer catalogue? How _smart_ could all these gloriously pretty people _really_ be?? _This_ was where his tax dollars were going??!

“Oh, yes,” Dr. Triss Merigold replied, quite unaware of Jaskier’s minor internal nervous meltdown. “Just like the last one. No prints so far, no fibres, no DNA. Uniforms tell me there was no sign of forced entry, so it's quite likely the victims all knew the assailant, and let him in.”

“Huh. So… No injuries, no evidence of assault. Which is like the books. The lividity pattern shows that she was laid down here almost immediately after she was killed,” he guessed, lifting the corpse up slightly to reveal a deeply purpled back, where the blood had saturated after death. “If she had been moved around, the staining would be a lot less pronounced. So that’s one datapoint: She was killed right here.”

The doctor was staring at him, faintly bemused. 

“What?” Jaskier said. “I do a lot of research!”

She snorted. “Yeah, I’m sure you d— oh dear,” she said, her gaze going over Jaskier’s shoulder, eyes widening a little. 

“What?” Jaskier demanded. “Wh— ACK!” he yelped, as he jerked up to his feet by the scruff of his collar, legs kicking wildly before he was flattened into a wall by— oh good god. He pasted on a tremulous smile. “Detective! ...hi? You look… feral.”

“YOU!” growled Detective Shockingly-Firm-Grip. “I thought I told you to _leave._ How the bloody hell did you get _in here?!”_ He flicked a glare at Doc Merigold, who immediately threw up her gloved hands, saying, “Woah, hey, don’t look at me! It’s not _my_ job to secure the perimeter! Go blame the uniforms!”

Rivia pinned him harder to the wall. Now, Jaskier thought clinically, would be a _very_ bad time to start grinding his semi against Rivia’s thighs. Did he have to _smell_ so good? Now _this_ was a _real_ crime _._ “Who,” the man hissed, murder in his — beautiful, golden, _knee-weakening_ — eyes, “the _fuck_ let you into my crime scene?”

Jaskier smirked weakly. “Well, detective,” he said, eyes sliding to the way Rivia’s throat bobbed a little, and that horrible gremlin voice in his head said, _you should touch his butt._ “Did I mention I’m friends with the Mayor?”

Rivia actually, sincerely, from-inside-of-his-chest, _growled_ at him _._

It was _amazing_.

“Captain,” Rivia snarled, dragging Jaskier into the Captain’s office by the scruff of his neck like a wayward kitten. Jaskier meeped a little when he was unceremoniously dumped into one of the visitor’s chairs but did not protest; Rivia elected to stand, right in front of the desk, hands curled around the edge, while he growled, “We need to _talk about this.”_

“No, we don’t.” Captain — Jaskier checked the name plate — Adrian Vesemir, ooooh, fun name, shot right back.

“ _He—”_ Rivia jabbed a finger at Jaskier, “—cannot be a part of this investigation.”

“Oh, yes he can. You know why, Detective? Because I said so, and last I checked, I’m still your superior officer. Mr. Pankratz has graciously offered us access to his fan mail,” Vesemir continued, “something _you_ should asked him for right from the start — something I’m sure you _would_ have done, if you hadn’t been so eager to get him out of your way.”

“He did what?” Rivia turned to glare down at Jaskier. “You did _what?”_

“My agent is putting together all my hardcopy fanmail,” Jaskier said earnestly, “and someone from her office will email you a copy of the rest of it. Tweets about discksucking and dismemberment, death threats on the fansites and messageboards, comments on Breitbart about evil, _evil,_ secret-reptile-society-members, all that good stuff. They’re compiling it right now.”

“They _are?_ Why?”

Jaskier frowned. Seriously, this was the problem with hiring SUPERMODELS to solve crime — they were _bad at it._ “Well,” he said, trying not to sound _too_ condescending, “in cases like this one, the killer is very likely to try and make contact with the object of his—”

“—obsession, yes, _I_ know that!” Rivia finished irritably. “How do _you_ know that?!”

Jaskier grinned. Al- _right_. Not just a pretty face after all. “Detective, can’t you guess? There’s two kinds of people who sit around trying to figure out how to kill people. Psychopaths, and mystery writers. I’m the kind that pays better.”

Rivia’s mouth flattened into a thin, unamused line. “You know,” he said, “this whole cutesy, metrosexual slicker shtick you’ve got going? It’s not as charming as you think it is.”

Jaskier cocked his head to the side, watching, watching. “Oh, I don’t know about that, Detective,” he drawled back, and was it his imagination, or was Rivia maybe just turning a little bit pink? He _was._ Oh, he _was._ So Jaskier rose up out of the chair, and the space between them narrowed to nothing, to inches. He was standing almost between Rivia’s thighs. “It usually gets me… _exactly_ what I want.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there was no way to not make this chapter filler-y — i tried very hard ._.  
> some minor changes have been made to fix the timeline in chapter 1 — unless you're trying to solve the mystery on your own, this should in no way affect your reading experience. although i will recommend NOT rewatching the pilot episode of castle if you're trying to solve it yourself, i'm not trying to reinvent the murder mystery genre here, they're pretty dang similar.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Captain Vesemir sighed, cutting right through the tension, “could you two take this somewhere that isn’t my office?” Rivia had startled, gone hilariously ashen, and dragged Jaskier out by the wrist — “Thanks, Captain!” he managed to yelp, with a stilted wave, “Bye!” and then, to Rivia, “I’m coming, jeez, no need to take my arm off, fuckin’ OW!” — to the detectives’ bullpen where he was dumped into another chair: this time the one by Rivia’s desk.

Brass and Zigrin had looked up from their work — stacks of paperwork for Brass, a computer screen for Zigrin — and were watching the two of them with mild interest. 

“So it’s true, then?” Brass said, mostly to Rivia. “We’re getting a mascot?”

“Hey,” Jaskier protested, rubbing his shoulder a little, if only because he was hoping Rivia would feel guilty. 

“Unfortunately,” Rivia confirmed, with no signs of impending guilt. Ah well. “Anything connecting the two vics yet?” he asked Zigrin, who shook his head.

“Not yet,” he replied. 

“Great,” Rivia sighed, pinching his brow tiredly, and Jaskier wondered how long he’d been working on this. It had been fortyish hours, now, since the first body had dropped — even if Homicide had been called in on the scene late, Jaskier was willing to bet Rivia hadn’t slept last night. He studied the detective, the extraordinarily lovely face, all clean patrician lines, the gently molded lips. There were such little things that detracted from his michelangelesque perfection: the pale stubble on his jaw, the faint crumpling lines around his mouth. There were shadows beneath his eyes, shaded lavender, like bruises, and Jaskier ran the math quickly: it had been at least a day and a half, for the detective, of no sleep. Jesus, no wonder he was grumpy.

“Alright,” Rivia said, rallying. “I’ll take the— fanmail.”

“Oh you will, will you?” Zigrin murmured.

Rivia went on, like he hadn’t heard, “Let’s try to create profiles for both of our vics, find points of intersection, some way the killer could have met them both. Yes? Alright.” He got up, rolling his shoulders, Jaskier following suit — and that was when the phone rang. He spoke briefly — when he put down the receiver, he wasn’t quite smiling, but there was something wonderfully intense about his eyes.

“Who was it?” Jaskier asked.

“Doc Merigold. She’s got something for us.”

“Okay then,” Jaskier said, and smiled tentatively. “Lead the way. Let’s go.”

Rivia made him put on shoe covers and gloves, a mask and crinkly, disposable coveralls that tie at the back. He himself made quick work of it, and then leaned against a shiny, white-tiled wall, watching Jaskier struggle through the process. He didn’t make an offer to help — which isn’t surprising. Jaskier was pretty sure none of this was actually, strictly, protocol, was pretty sure that you didn’t have to suit up like you’re entering an isolation ward to look at a corpse, and that Rivia was doing this purely to fuck with him. So he didn’t ask for help either, and felt meanly vindicated when they entered the examination room, and Doc Merigold’s eyes went a little wide with surprise at the way they were all wrapped up. 

“Well. Hi, Detective,” the doctor said. “I see you brought a friend.”

“Under protest,” Rivia tells her. Jaskier rolls his eyes. “You said you had something?”

Merigold’s eyes are snapping curiously between the two of them — but she answers him despite her obvious curiosity. “Yes,” she says, gesturing them inwards. On two slabs, side by side, the two victims have been laid out, their bodies covered by plain, cotton sheets, wet hair draping down the back of both slabs.

On the left, vic number one: Tia Doranda, a high-powered Midtown lawyer, late twenties, divorced, no kids, on the partner track at some posh, old-money firm. On the right, vic number two: Elleana May, a maître d’ at Café Campagne in the Upper West, the kind of slick gorgeous place that raked in awards and didn’t print prices on the menu. Married, also no kids, mid-forties.

Both of their throats had been slashed open, identical wide red gashes, like ghastly smiles carved into their skin. Merigold gestured them towards May’s body.

“So,” the doctor told them, “the first thing you should know is, the throat-slashing isn’t what killed either vic.”

Jaskier paused, frowning, and then— “Oh,” he said, “Of course,” and,

“Right, yeah, there wasn’t any—” Rivia murmured,

“Blood splatter,” they said almost in stereo, and Jaskier beamed at him, “Exactly!” and for a second, Rivia’s mouth curled up too.

They both turned to Merigold for confirmation, who looked a little disappointed that her big reveal had been stolen. “Yes, well,” she muttered. “if they’d been alive, the blood pressure when the jugular was severed would have sprayed the murderer — and the room — like a Jackson Pollock. So we know they were killed beforehand, long enough for their heart to stop, before the cut to the throat was made. What blood did seep out of the cavity was posthumously covered in rose petals.”

“Blood work turn anything up?” Rivia asked her.

“Oh, yes,” she said, smirking faintly now. “Drug cocktail, nothing exotic, benzos and ketamine, just street drugs. Big toxic dose of it, injected into the thigh—” she pushed up the sheet to reveal the injection site, “—knocked Ms. Doranda dead. Then he arranged them in the pose, slit their throats, covered them in flower petals. The cuts themselves are a little interesting.”

Rivia peered over the bodies, one by one. “Sloppy work,” he noted.

“So it’s not a medical professional,” Jaskier concluded.

“Definitely not,” Merigold confirmed.

Rivia looked thoughtful, before he turned to Jaskier. “That’s not like the book, is it?”

Jaskier blinked. Right. _Fan._ “No,” he said carefully. “He— he had training.”

Merigold looked between the two of them, curious. “Okay, well,” she said blandly, turning back to her charts, “I’ve only just got back the blood work on Miss Doranda here. Looks pretty likely the results for Mrs. May will be the same, but—”

“Wait a minute,” Jaskier cut in, tugging down the damn face mask, “you _just_ got back the blood test results for the _first_ victim? It’s been — nearly two days since she died!”

They were both looking a bit irritated now. “Under forty-eight-hour processing time — that’s _lightspeed_ fast,” Merigold told him. “That’s warp factor _eight_. And, if you haven’t figured it out already, the crime lab is gonna take a hell of a lot longer.”

Jaskier stared at her, struck. “What are you— do either of you _realize—_ We’re on a goddamn CLOCK HERE!” he yelled. “Thirty hours, we’ve got, until he kills again, and, what, how long does the crime lab take?”

“Three to five days, on average,” Rivia tells him. “And we aren’t sure that it _is_ a serial killer.”

“Three to five—” Jaskier spluttered. “What do you mean, you aren’t sure?! You want another dead body or something?!”

“Yes. That’s how it _works.”_

“Okay, fuck you, not today it doesn’t,” he snaps, wrenching out his phone, and dialing M for the Mayor.

Jaskier got out of the protective gear with sharp, jerking motions, shoving it all into a biohazard waste bin, and walked with Rivia back out of the cool morgue and into the cool spring evening without exchanging a single qord.

They got into his car, and he turned on the air-conditioning, pulling smoothly out of cramped parking lot, in painful, stilted silence. When they coasted to a stop at a red, Jaskier fidgeted restlessly in the seat. He could feel Rivia watching him.

“What,” he said, snappish, feeling self-conscious and too-seen, and Rivia didn’t speak for a long moment.

“Why are you doing this?” the detective asked him, eyes slanting at him across the car's old-fashioned benchseat.

“What do you care,” Jaskier muttered.

“At first I thought it was some kind of narcissistic, self-aggrandizing, you know, fetishistic thing, maybe, that you were impressed with yourself for managing to inspire a full-blown murderer,” he said casually, one hand on the steering, other arm stretched out over the top of the seat, lazy and sure, “but you don’t actually seem _that_ mentally disturbed—”

“Golly, detective, _thanks,_ ” Jaskier sneered.

“—and then I thought, maybe it was because you wanted justice for the vics, but you didn’t seem particularly broken up back there—”

“Yeah, that doesn’t _mean_ anything! You weren’t exactly weeping over their bodies either!”

“I have practice,” Rivia told him. They stopped at a red, and the detective turned to him, mouth curled in a curious twist. “You, I think, don’t. So it isn’t narcissism, and it isn’t outrage, and that makes a guy wonder, you know?”

Jaskier looked down at his hands, and then out the windshield, and then back down at his hands. He laughed quietly. “You’re not going to like my reasons, Detective,” he said to his hands. “They’re not as deep as you think they are.”

“Try me.”

Jaskier could feel those hazel-gold eyes on his face, and heat crawling up his neck. “I want to know _why._ I want the story. That’s all.”

“There’s not always a why,” Rivia told him, but his voice was gentle, smoky-soft. “In real life, it’s just people, doing terrible things to each other.”

And then Jaskier did look at him. “No,” he said. “There’s always a story, a sequence of events that makes everything make sense. You just have to care enough to _look_.”

Rivia was watching him, though, like he understood the tremble in Jaskier’s voice, like he felt it too, that deep, fundamental need, to crack open the workings of the human psyche, to decipher, to _understand._ “You think you can find it? The story?”

Jaskier’s smile was a slow-dawning thing; it flickered in his eyes before it curved the edges of his mouth. Rivia’s eyes shifted to his lips. They were close enough, and Rivia's hand brushed the top of Jaskier's shoulder, fingertips coasting the bare skin at the nape of his neck; Jaskier shivered, and for a second, he thought—

A car horn blared from behind them. The light was green. Rivia jerked away, his jaw tightening harshly, and he floored it, heading westwards into an amber-streaked sky, the light dying all around them as the air turned to gold.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!  
> click subscribe for updates, and if you liked it, remember to hit kudos <3
> 
> find me on tumblr [@ **pasdecoeur**](https://pasdecoeur.tumblr.com).


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